I'd only wanted to confirm which department she was in, a flicker of hope that she'd simply been on four for a meeting and seeing her would not be a common occurrence. But no. She's in human resources, assigned to cubicle 4W-28, putting her on the west side of the fourth floor. Way too close to my office for comfort.
Goddammit, I walked away for a reason. I didn't fuck her in Brady's office last weekend, even though I wanted to, because I'm not in the habit of making bad decisions. So I sent her home, where she belonged. Far away from a man like me, a man interested in one thing when the soft blinking of her eyes and the wide-eyed optimism on her face told me she was interested in something different. Then she shows up in my office. Nearly two hundred thousand people employed on the Vegas Strip and she's working in my casino. Sitting eighty feet from my office.
Fuck.
I don't need the distraction and she sure as hell doesn't need me. Opening this resort is my focus. Nothing else, no one else. This is my moment. This is my time to make a lasting contribution to the family company. This venture was my brainchild. I'm the one who brought it to the board. I'm the one who lined up the investment money. I'm the one who spent the last four years eating, living, breathing with the sole goal of making the Windsor the most profitable arm of the family business.
Me.
Besides, I fuck. I don't take women to dinner and escort them home to Connecticut to meet my parents.
Focused.
I'm a privileged son of a bitch. No, that's not right. I'm the privileged son of an heiress. My great-grandfather started a company that's ensured financial stability for generations. Each generation since, instead of resting, has grown the company larger. Bigger, better, more successful.
My mother has been running the North American division of Sutton Corporation for two decades. She's a force to be reckoned with and, in her fifties, not ready to step aside. My cousin took over as CEO of the company two years ago.
I could have fucked off for the rest of my life and it wouldn't matter. The company would have kept moving without me. I'm not an integral part, not like my mother, or my cousin, or my uncle running the cruise lines. My twenties were a struggle finding my place in this conglomeration. A place that would matter, a chapter header instead of a footnote.
The Windsor is my chapter header, my legacy.
It's not lost on me that my lasting contribution to humanity will be the self-indulgent opening of a luxury hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, not charity or healthcare reform or the abolition of racial disparity or funding public education.
Brady's behind the bar, more observing than bartending, so when he spots us arrive he comes over and we do the obligatory backslap handshake.
"Two weekends in a row. Wow." Brady folds his arms and leans against the bar top. "You're either really impressed with my microbrew or you're back for the girl."
Thanks, Brady.
"We sure as fuck did not come out to Henderson for beer," Canon mutters as he slides onto a stool. "You do card here, right?"
I'm about to tell Canon to fuck off when Brady tilts his head across the room. So she is here. I'm flooded with a rush of adrenaline, and something else, something different. There's a sense of exhilaration at seeing her again, a wasted emotion for a man just looking to fuck. As if I'm a teenager and this might be the first time I get my hand down a girl's pants, when I'm not and it's not.
Perhaps I just need to get her out of my system. Maybe just a taste, a quick fuck. A good time for both of us and then we move on. On Monday it's back to business. I turn in my seat, scanning the bar as Brady sets a couple of drafts in front of us. I locate her, pulling darts from a targeted cork board, her dark hair spilling down her back, the lighting picking up the highlights woven throughout her hair. She's in a denim skirt, the material snug over the curve of her ass, and the sight makes my eager fingers tighten around the glass in my hand. It doesn't help matters when she lifts up on her tiptoes to grab at a dart just out of her reach, her ass rising that much higher as she reaches.
She's tiny, and it makes me feel protective towards her in some antiquated bullshit way. As if she might need me to carry her over a puddle or buy her something pretty. She needs neither. She'd be easy to lift though, her legs spread around my hips as I sank into her, my hands gripping her ass as I bounced her up and down on my cock, her hands tugging my hair as she begged me for more, more, more.
In my mind she begs. Tiny whimpers. Please, Rhys. More, Rhys.
She turns, flashing a smile at someone behind her. Her smile is wide, a strand of hair falling across her cheek and her eyes sparkling with laughter. Her face is devoid of any visible makeup, which only serves to make her look younger and less calculated in any art of seduction.
As if her objectives are so much less intentional than most women. Less rehearsed. Or maybe she simply has no clue how she affects men, but that can't be right.
My eyes land on what she's smiling at. Or whom. A man. Why the hell am I surprised? As if she's been waiting around since—yesterday—when she offered me whatever I wanted with her? Seriously, what the fuck?
I snort and turn back to my drink.
Then I turn back to Lydia.
Canon watches me and rolls his eyes. "Okay, wow."
"Fuck off." I bring the glass to my lips and sip, eyes on my good girl as she tosses a dart. She says something that makes that man laugh and I wonder if they came together. Where the hell is the pushy blonde she was with last week? I assumed, like the arrogant asshole I am, that she'd be here with her friend. Just waiting for me to arrive and repeat the 'kissing thing,' as she called it. I take another sip and scan the bar until I find the blonde. She's at a table with two guys. Which means there are five of them and it's not a date. Or it's one hell of a kinky date.
"Lydia Clark. Recent graduate of LSU. New hire at the Windsor. Twenty-two." Canon gives me a dramatic wink at that detail before continuing, "Had a dog named Scout growing up—"
I stop watching Lydia to interrupt Canon. "How do you know that?"
"You pay me for security, remember? I know everything." He gives me a knowing look, as if he's some kind of clairvoyant.
It's creepy.
"Also I just took a picture of her and ran it through the software we're using for the casino," he adds, which makes a hell of a lot more sense than him being omniscient.
"Yeah, but how do you know about her dog? That wasn't on her employment file."
"No, it's on an Instagram post from last week," he says, looking at his phone. "Hashtag TBT," he reads aloud. "It's a Throwback Thursday post with a picture of a ten-year-old Lydia and her dog. See?" He turns his phone in my direction and I snatch it out of his hand with more aggravation than is necessary, but he's goading me for his own amusement. There she is. Tweenaged Lydia with a dog. She's in a Girl Trooper uniform. Jesus Christ. I toss Canon's phone onto the bar top in disgust.
"You know, when you're forty she'll be twenty-eight."
"Yeah, I get it, I'm old. She's young." I wonder if they really are on a fivesome date? Maybe that's what the kids are into now.
"No, asshole. I'm saying that when you're forty half your age plus seven is twenty-seven. When you're forty Lydia will be twenty-eight."